ROGER HEDGECOCK: SLAVERY AND THE 2ND AMENDMENT

Similar language is found in state constitutions adopted before the U.S. Constitution from Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts to North Carolina and Virginia. From non-slave-holding states to slaveholding states.

Slavery was not the reason for the Second Amendment. The overriding concern of the Founders was to insure individual liberty and protect that liberty from the federal government.

The liberty of slaves was not protected. In slaveholding states, the militias composed of slave holders no doubt were involved in suppressing slave revolts as far back as 1755.

It is also true that militias (every able-bodied man) were called out to protect settlers during Indian wars.

But these instances were not the cause of the adoption of the Second Amendment. The pervasive experience of the bloody Revolutionary War was the “genesis” of the campaign by anti-Federalists to attach a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, including the right to “bear arms.”

After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment imposed the Bill of Rights on the states, including the Second Amendment right to bear arms. This greatly troubled Southern Democrats.

In fact, the concept of “gun control” was first introduced (as a ban on “Saturday-night specials”) by segregationist Southern Democrats to keep blacks from being armed.

The first mass confiscation of guns was carried out by the 7th Cavalry against the Sioux after Little Bighorn, which led to the Massacre at Wounded Knee.